I'm back! Brisbane was lovely but I'm glad to be home. Thanks Sam and Raj for keeping the news flowing while I was sweating my arse off up north.
The eSafety commissioner has issued Twitter/X with a $610,500 fine for non-compliance with eSafety's request for answers regarding "the time it takes the platform to respond to reports of child sexual exploitation; the measures it has in place to detect child sexual exploitation in livestreams; and the tools and technologies it uses to detect child sexual exploitation material", as well as failing to "adequately answer questions relating to the number of safety and public policy staff still employed at Twitter/X following the October 2022 acquisition and subsequent job cuts". Now we play the waiting game to see if Elon pays up. If I was him I wouldn't bother.
Looks like Microsoft's purchase of Activision Blizzard is complete. They've even released a trailer to announce the deal getting done. As Arstechnica notes, "with this all-cash acquisition, Microsoft is now the third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony". I guess Microsoft's promises of giving access to Activision Blizzard games to GeForce Now and Ubisoft+, and signing 10-year deals with Sony and Nintendo to ensure they get access to the Call of Duty franchise were enough for regulators to approve the acquisition. The absurdly good value for money Game Pass will get Activision Blizzard titles in 2024.
Queensland joins NSW in creating a mandatory data breach notification scheme for government agencies. From the article - "if a Queensland government agency suspects it has been breached, it must 'take all reasonable' containment steps, and will generally have up to 30 days to assess the incident, although it can extend the assessment period via a written notice. There are also a series of exemptions, under Division 3, to issuing notifications; these include if notifying could 'compromise or worsen the agency's cyber security; or lead to further data breaches of the agency'. Agencies will need to keep a 'register' of breaches and publish a 'data breach policy'."
This might be of interest for the poor souls burdened with NBN HFC - Comcast in the USA is the first ISP in the world to roll out DOCSIS 4.0 on its coaxial cable network. While DOCSIS 4.0 is supposedly capable of 10 Gbps down and 6 Gbps up, Comcast will be offering its customers 2 Gbps up and down. This is exciting as it means theoretically, NBN could do the same here. Fuck, even 1 Gbps symmetrical will be greatly appreciated. The paltry 50 Mbit they offer now is so frustratingly slow. I don't think NBN will get much network upgrade love beyond replacing FTTN/FTTC with FTTP on demand, but it's nice to dream that HFC and FTTP will get their own upgrades sooner rather than later.
U.S. President Barack Obama (R) awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Microsoft founder Bill Gates (C) and his wife Melinda Gates (L), who have donated billions of dollars globally to promote health and fight poverty, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House November 22, 2016 in Washington, DC. Obama presented the medal to 19 living and two posthumous pioneers in science, sports, public service, human rights, politics and the arts. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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